It’s All About the Representation.

Ting Ting Liu

Over the past three weeks, a lot of materials were given to us: we watched “Orlando”, talked about recent news regarding Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke, read a couple of readings on Feminism, and watched an episode of Parks and Recreation, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and Hung.  

And the way I’m understanding all of this is through the Representation of everything; so here’s my two cents about all these different subjects:

1) Everyone had different reactions to Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke’s performance at the VMAs - some were shocked, some were disgusted. People can say “Let Miley do whatever she wants”, and I agree. Yes, Miley should have the freedom to do whatever she wants with her life, she has the freedom of expression, if she wants to represent herself with twerking than that’s good for her. However, I am a little bit sick and tired of the amount of attention and fame we’re giving to Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke for this incident. Yes, it is an incident that needed to be addressed, but not by doing a mass media coverage over it. Maybe in my eyes I just have been noticing the media do an excessive amount of coverage on the royal family’s new born baby and 20-year-olds twerking than other important news. I honestly cannot condone the way Cyrus and Thicke were representing themselves, it just isn't appropriate when you have young fans watching and imitating you.

2) With the film “Orlando”, this movie was presenting a lot of different references and themes on Feminism. However, the key representation I understood from the film “Orlando” is with a line that actress Tilda Swinton said as she transformed from Lord Orlando to Lady Orlando, “Same person. No different at all. Just a different sex.” Swinton’s character was representing that technically we are all the same human beings, the only difference between us (males and females) is just our biological sex. However, because of the way our society has progressed, we have assigned our biological sexes genders, and gender roles. Thus, the representation we get from the film “Orlando” is that because of our assigned genders and gender roles it has created limitations and restrictions on both sexes. Immediately when Lord Orlando was transformed to Lady Orlando, she was treated much differently. When she was Lady Orlando, two men told her that first of all, she was technically "dead" so she can't own any properties and that second of all, she is now technically a "woman" thus she really cannot stay and own these properties. The man right after that pointed out that the two (being "dead" and being a "woman") were practically "the same thing".

3) The latest three episodes we watched: Parks and Recreation, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and Hung, all had representations of stereotypes being depicted in our society for different gender and their gender roles. Parks and Recreation, although witty and hilarious, had many 'stereotypical' characters in this pilot episode (I have never seen Parks and Recration before this). The Adventure of Ozzie and Harriet is a 1952 TV show, and gender roles back then were very set on what a male does and what a female does- males are the bread-winners, females stay at home and take care of the children and house chores; and that is what was shown on the episode. Even in Hung, both Tanya and Ray play modern stereotypes of genders/gender roles. 

4) Lastly, Jane Gaines’ paper, “Women and Representation: Can we Enjoy Alternative Pleasures?”, discusses about how films and filmmakers are setting representations of women. At one point Gaines talks about a limitation of feminist film criticism, which is the lack of diversity of women. She mentions that “Black women filmmakers…have as a whole chosen not to produce any media work that diverges from standard formats and calls attention to its own formal devices”(Gaines, 82). This gives the representation that filmmakers do not feel comfortable or feel powerful enough to abstain from the mainstream traditional ways. And from this, it's clear that Gaines does not want this representation of women to remain the same.